The car bizz. It’s a wonder salesmen don’t get killed daily…by the other salesmen. It may be different today, but back in the day, it was a badge of success to steal a deal from another guy somehow. One sad Sunday I got a taste of my chosen career’s bugaboos.

I had just started working at a store and had been there one full day on a Saturday. I made a deal so I was feeling good about the place and the next morning I was jazzed to be there. I had an appointment to show a used truck to a friend of mine. I’d called him because I knew he was looking for a three-quarter ton Chevy and we had a nice one. He said he’d come in right after lunch on Sunday. 

First thing when we all got to work was the car shuffle. All the salesmen had to move cars. And we had to transfer some cars to a holding lot down the road, so I got caught up in that fiasco. We drove a bunch of cars to the storage lot which was three miles down the street. When we got there, we needed to get a bunch of the cars already there out and take them back to the main lot. The lot was crammed so we were moving cars around jockeying them around to get the buried ones out so we could park the ones we’d just brought. There were at least fifteen of us and sometimes we had to move ten cars to get one, and there was no overflow anywhere to park the cars. Kinda like a puzzle game.

We worked for a long time, I was jumping in cars, moving them, then moving another and another and pretty soon I started noticing I was the only guy there moving cars. Everyone else was gone. I didn’t have keys for the gate on the lot and being the responsible idiot I am, I didn’t immediately jump in a car and head back. I figured they’d all made a trip and would be back, so I continued moving cars around to get them parked right and get the other cars we needed to take back out.

After about an hour, I’d had enough and I hopped in one of the cars, threw the two keyboards in it, shut the gate, locked it up, and drove back to the store. I was sweaty, dirty from all the dust on the cars, and pissed off. When I walked in the showroom, every office was full of buyers and salesmen writing car deals. The fourth office I went by had my friend sitting with a salesman. I went in to say hi and find out why no one had told me my customer was there. He told me the guy he was talking to told him they fired me just that very morning. And he said he was buying the truck, they’d just agreed on a deal. I told him to wait while the other sales guy was hemming and hawing and spitting his line of BS. I went to the sales office and talked to the sales manager and told him the story.

He told me they had already worked a deal and were sending the deal to the F & I office to do the paperwork. He told me how sorry he was, but said since I hadn’t logged my friend on the log sheet I was out of luck and I wouldn’t even get half a deal even though I was the only reason the customer was even there. I was pissed, so I went and told my friend what was going on while the snake who snaked my deal continued pissing and moaning. He even threatened to have me fired for interfering in his car deal.

My friend told the salesman he was done and wasn’t buying the truck. I used the phone and called a friend of mine at a Chevy store. They had the perfect truck. I told my buddy that I’d meet him at the other dealership and get him fixed up, and we both left. First I went in the sales office, took my sales license off the wall, gave the manager the key to the car I’d driven back from the other lot and told him the keyboards for all the cars was in the front seat of it and told him I quit. Then I told him his truck deal just blew up and I was sorry but he didn’t get it logged in time. He told me I’d never work there again.

We went to the Chevy store and I met the sales manager and told him my story. He hired me on the spot. I sold my buddy the truck they had and started working there. We were all done by four PM and I went home.

My short career at that store left a really bad taste in my mouth over the years. That dealer is long gone now and the store has been a few different used car lots. No matter, when I drive by the place, which is fairly often, I silently hope all their car deals go south and the ones they rolled yesterday come rolling back on a hook.